


blind but for blue

by SouthSideStory



Series: the day after forever [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ableism, Catholic Bucky Barnes, Catholic Steve Rogers, Great Depression, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, Minor Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers-centric, Steve Rogers’s teenage existential crisis, Suicide, angst seasoned with fluff and slow-cooked in a broth of unrequited love, multi-faith Barnes family, that isn’t going to stay unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 07:59:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11054703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthSideStory/pseuds/SouthSideStory
Summary: Steve is eleven, Bucky twelve, and they’ve been told often enough that they’re getting too old for this: sleeping side by side, sharing space like the brothers they’re not. Neither his mother nor Bucky’s has outright banned this bad habit, but he thinks that’s only because they still expect their sons to grow out of it. That’s exactly what Bucky might do, and it scares Steve, since he could happily sleep like this every night for the rest of his life.





	blind but for blue

.

.

"I believe there is penance in yearning. There is poverty in giving too much of your heart." - Lang Leav

**{1929 - 1931}**

.

. 

Steve’s mother likes to say he’s a miracle. Most babies born fourteen weeks early don’t survive, and she thinks it’s some kind of gift from the Lord that he lived.

Steve doesn’t feel like much of a miracle. He’s been half-deaf, crooked-backed, anemic, and asthmatic all his life. When he was seven, a nasty bout of strep throat turned into scarlet fever, then rheumatic fever. Thanks to that run of luck, he now enjoys a weak heart. And on top of everything else, he’s color blind.

By eight, Steve stops praying to get better. He isn’t like other children, who recover from colds in a matter of days. There’s no cure around the corner, no medicine that will transform him into a healthy boy. He’s sick and in pain, and he’ll stay that way for the rest of his life.

By eleven, Steve understands that he’ll die young. He overhears Doc Wallace telling Ma that he might make it to thirty, but only with God’s grace. Math isn’t his strong suit, but Bucky helped him pass the test on fractions, and all Steve can think is that a third of his life is already gone.

There are so many things he wants to do, wants to _be_ , but somewhere there’s a clock counting down, numbering his days. There’s too little time, Steve knows. Whatever he was meant to become, he won’t live long enough to find out what it is.

.

.

“James Buchanan Barnes, get your tail in here right now, young man!”

Bucky rolls his eyes, but he leans out the open door of Steve’s apartment and yells across the hallway. “What is it, Ma?”

Steve peeks out too, curious about all the fuss, because it isn’t like Winnie to shout in a public space like that.

She points a finger at Bucky and says, “You know very well what it is. Unless you expect me to believe that a fairy took my daughter and left a hairless changeling in her place.”

“She ain’t totally hairless,” Bucky says, smiling his innocent smile (the one that means he’s been up to no good). “I just gave her a trim while she was sleeping.”

Steve stifles a laugh. Much as she loves him, Winnie already thinks he’s a bad influence on Bucky, and he doesn’t want to give her anymore fuel for that fire—mostly because she’s right.

Bucky bites his lip, and Steve notices that it looks swollen and a little darker. Reddened, probably—not that he can see red, but he knows it’s the color of blood and maple leaves and Snow White’s mouth.

Bucky leans toward Steve’s left ear (because his hearing is better there than in his right) and says, “I oughta go. Face the music and all.”

Steve shakes his head. Even when he’s knee-deep in mischief, Bucky somehow manages to charm his way out of trouble. “Good luck, pal.”

Bucky smirks, salutes him, and runs down the hall to manage his mother’s wrath.

Then Steve is alone, and even though his coldwater apartment is small, he suddenly feels surrounded by too much space.

He’s fresh out of clean paper, so he digs one of his lazier sketches out of the box under his bed and uses the blank back for something new. Ma hates it when he sits on the fire escape; it’s too old and rusty to trust, she says. But his mother isn’t here, so Steve takes his art supplies outside and draws the part of Red Hook that he can see from this perch. It’s a landscape he’s sketched a hundred times, but each version is different, a unique moment captured on paper.

He wonders how it might keep changing over the next ten, twenty, thirty years, and if he’ll be around to see any of it.

.

.

Steve’s ma and Bucky’s get on like a house on fire. It’s no surprise that they became fast friends, two Irish women living on the same floor of a falling-down Brooklyn tenement, with husbands off fighting in the war to end all wars. Neither of them really came back: Steve’s father was returned to his pregnant wife in a coffin, and Bucky’s dad lost something of himself overseas.

Or, as Bucky puts it, “He left all his gumption in Europe.”

It’s not a nice way for Bucky to talk about his father, but Steve knows that he isn’t exactly wrong. Even on good days, George Barnes flinches at loud noises and seems to miss half of what folks say to him. On bad days, he can’t even get out of bed.

Steve knows these things, because the Barnes’s apartment door stays open to him, just like his door stays open to Bucky’s family. Somehow, over the years, their two homes have fused into one, and there’s little room for secrets between them.

Tonight, he and Bucky are sleeping on the floor of the Barnes’s living room. Bucky made a nest for them out of couch cushions, crocheted blankets, and pillows he stole from his sisters’ room. It’s warm, surprisingly plush for a makeshift bed, and it smells like Bucky.

Steve is eleven, Bucky twelve, and they’ve been told often enough that they’re getting too old for this: sleeping side by side, sharing space like the brothers they’re not. Neither his mother nor Bucky’s has outright banned this bad habit, but he thinks that’s only because they still expect their sons to grow out of it. That’s exactly what Bucky might do, and it scares Steve, since he could happily sleep like this every night for the rest of his life.

“Stevie? You still awake?”

Bucky’s voice sounds too hushed, even for a whisper in the middle of the night, and Steve can barely understand him.

“Yeah, but I can’t hear you so well.”

“Sorry,” Bucky says. He scoots closer, until Steve can feel warm breath against his cheek.

“What do you got to say that’s more important than sleeping?” Steve asks.

Bucky pokes him in the ribs. “Nothing, really, but my mind’s all over the place. And it’s not like beauty rest could do your ugly mug any good.”

Steve smiles so wide his cheeks hurt. “I can’t help it if you got all the looks and I got all the brains.”

“Real funny,” Bucky says. “Got ourselves a regular comedian here.”

He knows Bucky’s most ticklish spots: the taut muscles above his knees and the soft belly that he’s self-conscious about. Last summer, Mary Katherine poked the puppy-fat that lingers around Bucky’s waist and oinked. He’s been sensitive about being touched there ever since, but he still lets Steve tickle him, burying his face in the couch cushions to muffle his laughter.

Then Bucky pulls Steve into a headlock and ruffles his hair. It annoys him, the way Bucky’s manhandling always does, but tonight something about it feels good too. A fluttering thrill in his stomach that makes him shiver. So Steve kicks and struggles, tries to tear himself away. It’s no use, of course; he’s too weak to break free from Bucky.

“Quit it,” Steve hisses, and Bucky finally lets go of him.

“Aww, c’mon, don’t be sore at me. I was just kidding around.”

Steve turns away, giving his back and his bad ear to Bucky. Even if he says anything else, Steve probably won’t be able to hear it.

.

. 

He and Bucky don’t last one day as altar boys. Father McMullen puts Steve in charge of holding a thurible full of burning incense, and when he starts sneezing in front of the whole congregation, Bucky cracks up laughing. Then Steve starts laughing too, so hard that his belly aches and he has to double over. It’s hilarious until his mother drags the two of them out of church by their ears, calling them heathens. It probably doesn’t help their show of remorse that her threats of eternal damnation only send them both into another fit of snorts and giggles.

Later that night, when Bucky sneaks into Steve’s room, he says, “If laughing sends you to hell, then I don’t think I’d want to go somewhere as boring as heaven.”

Steve would like to agree, but now all he can think about is the afterlife that looms closer with every fever that burns through him. Maybe he ought to behave better in church, and stop battering Sister Bethany with unanswerable questions about God’s goodness in such an unfair world. Just in case.

“Heaven sounds pretty nice to me,” Steve says. “Besides, it’s the only chance I’d get to meet my dad. Wouldn’t want to miss that, you know?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “S’pose not.”

Steve squints, trying to bring Bucky’s face into better focus, but it’s impossible to make out fine details in the dark.

“What’s wrong?” Steve asks.

Bucky pulls away, turns onto his back, and stares up at the ceiling.

“Sometimes I wish my father was… gone,” he whispers. “He doesn’t want to be alive anyway. I’ve heard him say so before, when he thought I wasn’t listening. The girls are afraid to talk to him, because sometimes he hits us when he forgets where he is. Not on purpose, but it still doesn’t feel too good. And it hurts Ma to see him so sad all the time.”

_It hurts you too_ , Steve wants to say, but he doesn’t think Bucky would appreciate hearing that right now.

Instead, he snuggles up to Bucky’s side and says, “It doesn’t make you a bad person to think that. It’s gotta be hard, watching somebody you love fall apart.”

The next day, they pretend they never talked about it, and report to Father McMullen for their punishment.

He tasks Bucky with scrubbing the cathedral floors every Saturday for a month. Steve insists on receiving equal punishment, since he was just as disruptive as Bucky, but Father McMullen refuses.

“Steven, you have a crooked spine, nervous lungs, and a damaged heart. Scrubbing the floor would be far more painful for you than it is for James, and there’s nothing equal about that,” says Father McMullen.

All Steve hears is that he’s too frail to do anything, and he knows that isn’t true. His body might be fragile, but he’s got enough will to make up for it.

He says as much to Bucky as soon as they step out of the church. Bucky looks at him like he’s an idiot and cuffs him on the ear, not quite light enough to be gentle.

“Hardheaded, that’s what you are, but all the stubbornness in the world won’t cure you,” Bucky says. “Pushing yourself too hard only makes you sicker. You’ve got to accept that someday, Steve. If you don’t, you’re gonna get yourself killed.”

_So what?_ Steve thinks. His unreliable body will do the job soon enough anyway.

He pushes Bucky’s chest. “Everybody else thinks I can’t take care of myself. You don’t need to say it too.”

Steve leaves before Bucky can answer. They don’t talk for days, but by Mass the following week they sit next to each other in the pews, biting back laughter every time their eyes meet.

.

.

Even though Steve stays in Father McMullen’s bad books more often than not, he loves going to Mass. Maybe it’s the artistic instinct that he can’t seem to shake, no matter how many bullies beat him up for girlishness, but Steve is awed by the beauty of the church.

The ceiling looms high overhead, dwarfing the people inside, and it reminds Steve that things greater than himself exist. He finds the strangest measure of peace in feeling small before God; in this way, he’s just like everyone else.

The rose window is his favorite part of the cathedral. On sunny days, it shines like a blossoming sun, too bright to look at directly. He’s heard that the window is even more impressive if you can see its rainbow reflections, but Steve can’t picture it. Heaven is easier to imagine than a life in full color.

Believing gives Steve the kind of purpose and comfort that he needs to get through bad days. When he’s bedridden, too faint to stand and strangling on his own breath, he tries to remember that he’s not alone. It helps, if only a little.

.

.

A funny thing about the Barnes family is that they’re half Catholic and half Jewish. Neither Winnie nor George was willing to give up their own faith when it came to raising their children, so they worked it out that Bucky and his sisters would be both.

Bucky whines about having to go to temple on Saturdays and church on Sundays, but Steve can tell that it’s an empty sort of protest. If Bucky really hated it, he’d stay at home, and God Himself couldn’t change his mind.

Yom Kippur falls on October 14th, and Bucky spends most of the day hiding out in Steve’s room, complaining about his empty stomach.

“I don’t see how starving myself for a day is supposed to get me closer to God,” Bucky says. He sounds grumpy in the particular way that only his hunger brings out.

“Well it’s the Day of Atonement, isn’t it?” Steve asks. “That’s what your Dad said. Sounds like a little penance would make sense.”

Bucky throws himself across Steve’s narrow bed, unbuttons his shirt, and kicks off his shoes. “My father won’t open his mouth to say ‘boo’ three hundred sixty-four days out of the year, but on Yom Kippur he turns into a school marm. ‘You can’t wash today, James. You can’t wear those shoes, James. You can’t eat a goddamn cracker, James.’”

Bucky has been throwing around ‘goddamn’ all day, and Steve figures it’s some kind of secret rebellion, since he hasn’t yet worked up the courage to say it in front of his parents.

“It’s pretty important to him, I guess,” Steve says.

He sits on the edge of his bed, unlaces his shoes, and swats Bucky’s calf. “Make some room for me on my own bed, _James_.”

Bucky lets out a long-suffering groan and kicks Steve in the ribs—softly, of course, because he wouldn’t dare risk hurting him for real. Steve wishes, that just once, he could convince Bucky not to handle him with kid gloves.

“Shit on a shingle, can you not do that?” Bucky asks. “It’s so weird when you call me James.”

“Why? It’s what everyone else calls you,” Steve says.

Bucky kicks him again, even gentler this time. Then he drapes his feet across Steve’s lap and says, “Yeah, well, you’re not everyone else, now are you?”

Steve’s cheeks grow warm. Even though Bucky said that blithely, like it doesn’t mean anything special, it means a lot to him.

“Put your stinky feet somewhere else. I’m not your footstool,” Steve says.

His voice cracks on the last syllable, like it’s been doing lately when he’s nervous. Because Bucky is a jackass, he laughs. Steve wants to tell him to shut up, but he’s afraid his voice will break on the anger that’s burning in his chest, welling up in his throat.

Bucky’s voice seemed to drop an octave overnight, skipping right over the wavering pitch that’s been humiliating Steve for the last three months. A small, petty part of him resents Bucky for that—and so much else: his strong body and handsome face; how he picks up new skills like he learned them in a past life, so quickly that it’s almost eerie; the way he always manages to sail his way out of trouble, charming everyone from classmates to nuns with nothing but an endearing smile. It all comes so _easily_ to Bucky, while Steve works twice as hard only to be overlooked, bullied, and mocked.

It might be hard not to hate Bucky if Steve didn’t love him so much.

They lie in bed, halfway dozing under the shine of sunlight too sharp for autumn. By the time the day wanes into dusk, Bucky has fallen into a catnap. Steve feels him shifting against his side, sleepily searching for a comfortable spot—and then Bucky wraps an arm around Steve’s waist.

They’ve slept alongside each other for years, a practice his mother started them on as babies. According to Winnie, Steve wailed like a banshee whenever he slept anywhere besides Bucky’s bed. Ma says they worried at first, because Steve was a fragile baby, underweight and already plighted by a cocktail of ailments. Bucky was sixteen months older than Steve, and like most toddlers, he had a tendency to grab things too forcefully. But by all accounts, Bucky behaved like an angel with Steve by his side. Never held him too tightly or played with him too roughly, not even once.

Steve has spent a whole lifetime sharing beds with Bucky, but it’s never been quite like this. That fluttering feeling has settled in his stomach again, and somehow it makes him nervous and happy at once.

Without giving it much thought, Steve leans back, settling his body more closely to the curve of Bucky’s: head nestled against the slope where shoulder meets throat, back aligned to Bucky’s chest, their legs tangled together. They’re pressed close, every inch of Steve cuddled up to Bucky, and he feels so safe and peaceful, caught in a warm embrace.

He’s almost asleep when he feels Bucky startle awake. There’s a moment when they’re both frozen, still entwined—and then Bucky cusses, jerks away, and says, “ _Eww_ ,” in the same way he does when he smells something gross.

Steve doesn’t dare say anything, because if he opens his mouth, he doesn’t know what kind of wounded noise will come out.

Bucky scrambles off the bed, shuddering like there’s a bug under his shirt, and says, “If you ever tell anybody that happened, I’ll skin you alive and make a jacket out of the leather.”

Bucky laughs when he says it, but Steve can tell he’s serious about wanting to keep this quiet.

He’s known Bucky too long not to recognize the disgust in his expression. Steve can’t bear to look him in the eye right now, because his whole body feels heavy, weighed down by shame.

It’s too messy to parse out and make sense of, so Steve pulls his shoes on and says, “We better get back to your place before our mothers come looking for us.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Don’t want to miss the honey cakes.”

.

.

Steve does his best not to think about the way he cuddled close to Bucky, seeking out something he’d rather not acknowledge. It’s a hard memory to lock away, but not as difficult to forget as the look of revulsion on Bucky’s face when he woke up and found himself entangled with Steve.

A perfect distraction presents itself on October 29th, but it’s not nearly worth the trouble it brings.

The stock market crashes two weeks after Yom Kippur. The papers print nothing else, and it’s all their parents talk about. Steve doesn’t understand how one bad day on Wall Street could be such a disaster for everyone, but hard times answer that question quick enough.

Shanty towns pop up all over New York, tiny cities within the city, where homeless folks sleep in scrap metal shacks. Most people call them Hoovervilles, after the president, but Steve doesn’t see how that’s very fair, since Herbert Hoover didn’t crash the stock market. He watches grown men stand in line at soup kitchens, waiting for a free meal. By his twelfth birthday, Steve, his mother, and the whole Barnes family are standing in those lines too.

Ma keeps working at Kings County Hospital, even though most of the nurses got fired. Doc Wallace says she only held onto her position because she’s the best nurse they’ve got. Her pay gets cut, though, and when Steve outgrows his old back brace, she cries because she can’t afford a new one for him.

Winnie loses her job at the textile factory. She starts waitressing at the kind of bar decent women shouldn’t even see the inside of, and spends her days cleaning houses for all the rich ladies in Brooklyn Heights. George searches for work, but there aren’t many jobs for a man with no skills beyond trench warfare, and besides, he’s too anxious to last more than a month anywhere.

Bucky drops out of school in the spring, two weeks before he turns fourteen, so that he can take a construction job for the WPA. The classroom feels empty without Bucky sitting at the desk to his left, the lessons slow and boring. They barely see each other these days, because Bucky spends most of his free time taking care of his sisters.

“Dad needs to get off his ass and _work_ ,” Bucky says. “Ma is just about killing herself raising the girls, keeping house, and cleaning for half of Brooklyn Heights. I’m busting my butt too, building stupid sidewalks that nobody needs. We shouldn’t have to do all that while he sleeps day and night.”

Steve knows it’s not his business, but George is a kind, quiet fella, and it’s not fair to blame him for being sick. “Your dad can’t help that he’s shell-shocked, Bucky.”

“What do you know about it?” Bucky snaps. “I’m gonna be a damn idiot reading kids’ books for the rest of my life, thanks to his useless ass.”

Steve ducks his head, because Bucky is right that he can’t understand. Ma insists that he has to stay in school, and even if she changed her mind, nobody would hire an eighty-pound asthmatic with a bent back and heart trouble. Steve’s broken body keeps protecting him from the challenges other people have to face, and he hates that even more than the pain it causes him.

Still, he worries about George. Steve knows what it’s like to be so sick that you burden your family. He wonders if Bucky thinks he’s lazy too, but he can’t bring himself to ask.

.

.

Six months after Bucky takes the WPA job, George stops being useless; he puts a gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger while his family is at church.

Steve missed Mass because he’s still recovering from a cold, so he’s the one who hears the gunshot. He hurries over to the Barnes’s apartment, heart beating an erratic rhythm in his chest.

He finds George in the bathroom, a grey (red) stain splattered across the wall behind his head. Steve has the stupid, passing thought that it almost looks like a paint-speckled canvas that he once saw at the MET.

Then he closes George’s eyes—pale, heavy-lidded, shaped exactly like Bucky’s—and takes three deep puffs from his inhaler until the threat of an asthma attack passes.

Mrs. Copeland, his downstairs neighbor, finds him in the bathroom. She screams so loud that it hurts even Steve’s ears, then covers her mouth with the back of her hand and makes a choking sound. Maybe she’s trying not to throw up.

Steve wonders, in a vague, distant sort of way, why _he_ isn’t screaming or puking. Boys aren’t supposed to cry, but he knows—knew—George, grew up down the hall from the Barnes family. So shouldn’t he feel something?

Mrs. Copeland takes a few deep breaths, wipes at her nose, and says, “You shouldn’t have to look at this, Steven. Come with me, and I’ll call the police.”

Steve shakes his head. “Bucky told me that Jewish folks don’t leave their dead alone. I think it might be real disrespectful to run off with him like this.”

_Shmira_ , Steve remembers. He thinks it means _watching_.

“Then let me get Mr. Hoffman to keep watch,” says Mrs. Copeland.

“No, I should stay,” Steve says. “I knew George better than anybody besides his family. But it’d help a lot it if you’d go to our church and tell Winnie what happened.”

He can’t stand the thought of her walking in on this sight, much less Bucky or the girls.

Mrs. Copeland frowns, but it’s sympathetic and soft around the edges. “Of course I will. And I’ll send up Mr. Hoffman to help watch over George with you.”

“Thanks,” Steve says.

After Mrs. Copeland leaves, he takes George’s hand. It’s growing cooler by the moment. Mr. Hoffman joins him in keeping a vigil over the body, but he doesn’t speak. He simply stands aside and lets Steve say goodbye.

When he touches George’s chest, it’s warm. As if the space around his heart hasn’t yet caught up to the coldness that’s settling in everywhere else, and Steve realizes that death doesn’t happen all at once. It creeps over a body, shutting down each part, piece by piece, until life leaks out entirely.

He thinks of all the times that George sat in a corner chair, staring off into a distance that no one else could see, a look of pure yearning on his face. Like he’d glimpsed some peaceful paradise, but it was too far away to reach.

Maybe he’s found it now. Steve hopes so.

.

.

George left four letters on the kitchen table: for Steve and his mother, Winnie, the girls, and Bucky. Steve can see from the thickness of the envelopes that the letter to Bucky is by far the longest, and he wonders what George had to say to the son he always disappointed.

A police officer and the Barnes’s rabbi take his body to the synagogue for preparation. Steve and his mother stay up all night, mourning with their neighbors—their family in all but blood.

Winnie holds Miriam and Delilah close, while Steve’s mother cradles little Rebecca, who isn’t yet old enough to understand what’s happening.

Bucky has been sitting on the floor, elbows propped on his knees, staring straight ahead, for the better part of the last three hours. All day, he’s refused to comfort his sisters, let his mother hold him, or talk to anyone. When Steve tried to touch his shoulder, he flinched and told him to go away.

After Winnie puts the girls to bed, she walks over to Bucky and says, “You can’t sit there all night, James.”

“Watch me.” His voice sounds flat and unfeeling, so colorless that it barely sounds like Bucky.

Winnie squeezes her eyes shut tight, like she’s trying to stave off more tears.

Steve wants to shake Bucky. It’s not fair, he knows, because Bucky just lost his father, and however he feels right now should be respected. But it’s hard to watch him hurt his his mother when she’s already suffering so much.

Winnie turns away. She probably doesn’t want Bucky to see her crying again, but it doesn’t matter. He isn’t even looking in her direction.

Steve’s mother sets her hand on Winnie’s shoulder and whispers, “Let him be, Win. You need to rest, and James wants to be alone right now.”

Bucky is still sitting on the floor with a terrifyingly blank expression on his face when Ma pulls Steve back to their own apartment. For once, the doors of their respective homes stay shut, and he wishes it was enough to keep the Barnes’s grief from seeping across the hall.

Ma kisses him on the forehead as he climbs into bed. “You were so strong today, Steve. You stayed with George all that time, just to make sure his faith was honored, and I haven’t seen anything so brave since your father enlisted.”

Steve grabs her hand and squeezes tight. “It was awful,” he says.

Ma pulls him into her arms, rocking him like he’s a baby still, instead of a boy almost grown. “It’s all right, love. Let it out.”

Steve clings to his mother, hanging on so that he can keep himself together. There’s an ache in his chest, choking him, and it feels like he’s crying even though the tears won’t come.

It’s selfish, but now all Steve can think about is that it will be him someday. He’s going to die trapped in this body that has always felt like a cage, and his mother will probably be the one to find him. She’ll have to feel the heat leech out of his hands, watch cold death crawl from his fingertips to his heart.

“I don’t want to die,” he says.

Ma shakes him, and she sounds sharper than he’s ever heard her when she says, “Listen to me, Steven Grant Rogers. You have too much good in you for it be meaningless. Too much good for you to die young.”

Steve nods against his mother’s shoulder. He wishes that he could believe her, but it’s hard to accept after what he saw today. Sometimes loss is just loss, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it.

.

.

Dawn light steals through Steve’s window and slinks across the floor. He lies awake, every part of him sore from a sleepless night, watching wan sunlight cut through the shadows of his room.

Ma peeks in to smile at him and say that she’s heading to work. “There’s chicken noodle soup on the stove. Please try to eat some, all right?”

Steve nods, even though his appetite, usually delicate, has disappeared entirely.

He’s still wide awake an hour later when he hears the front door open. He wonders if it might be Rebecca, who’s developing the habit of toddling across the hall to cling to Steve’s mother when she’s scared.

But no, Rebecca’s little feet wouldn’t step so heavily, and Steve knows every detail that makes up Bucky Barnes, right down to the sound of his footsteps.

“Buck? Are you okay?”

Bucky rushes to the bed and burrows beneath the thin blanket, yanking Steve close. It shortens his breath, being held onto so desperately, but Steve doesn’t mind. That blank expression has been wiped off of Bucky’s face, and it’s a relief to feel him reaching out for connection. Choosing Steve as his anchor.

He runs his fingers through Bucky’s hair. It’s dirty, strong with his boyish scent, and strangely pleasant to touch.

“I hate him,” Bucky says. “I know it’s not fair, but it’s the truth.”

Steve tightens his arms around Bucky’s back, embracing him with all the strength he has.

“He was a goddamn coward,” Bucky says. A broken pitch roughens his voice, and he tucks his face against Steve’s chest, burying his tears. “He should’ve fought to get better. He should’ve fought for _us_.”

There’s nothing Steve can say to fix this, no platitudes he can offer for the sake of giving comfort. Not without lying, and Bucky despises lies above everything else.

So Steve holds on with all he’s got. He swears that he won’t let anything hurt Bucky this badly ever again. He’ll walk through fire to keep him safe, tear down the whole wide world if he has to.

“You’re gonna make it through this,” Steve says. “I’ve got you.”

.

.

It hits him, while he watches Bucky sleep: what the painful joy in his chest is, what the hot shiver in his stomach means. Steve is heartsick, so hungry to belong to Bucky that he can barely breathe without him.

And it makes perfect sense, that his devotion could grow in a new direction, because the distance from one kind of love to another isn’t all that far.

Bucky stirs and stretches, blinks his sleepy eyes. They’re vivid, beautiful, and in an ocean of dull grey, startlingly blue—the only color that Steve has ever been able to see.

.

.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to deeppoeticgirl for all her help as a beta! You’re the absolute best, dear. 
> 
> I had too much fun with this story. It gave me an excuse to research the Great Depression, 1930s New York, and the treatment of WWI veterans upon their return home. And, of course, writing teenage Steve falling for Bucky was pretty sweet too! ;)
> 
> This fic is the first of a series of interconnected stories. The next piece, “a perfect soldier,” takes place during WWII, and it will be from Bucky’s point-of-view.


End file.
